Whicker: Preston Mattingly is on the rebound

The first game, he didn’t play. The second game, he sneaked in nine minutes, at the end of a 31-point blowout loss to Butler.

One missed shot, one turnover, one assist.

The numbers do not matter, not now. The name does. Preston Mattingly is back in a box score. As long as he can remain there, he’s ahead of the game.

Yes, you know his dad, Don. And you might remember Preston, from the 2006 baseball draft.

But that dream came and went, so Mattingly is now a 26-year-old freshman at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas.

At 6-foot-3 he is playing basketball, which might have suited him best all along.

“Yeah, I’m pretty old for a freshman, but it’s the same atmosphere,” Mattingly said the other day. “In baseball there were always younger guys. There were guys from different backgrounds and you learned something from everybody. It’s a blast, being on a team again.”

This is the side benefit from playing everything, instead of stretching one sport through 12 months. In high school Mattingly made all-conference teams, as a receiver and a shooting guard.

He also played shortstop, and committed to Tennessee in hopes of playing basketball and baseball.

That changed when the Dodgers made him a “sandwich pick” and gave him a $1 million bonus.

At the time Don was the Yankees’ batting coach. “Other than the fact that he’s a right-handed hitter with power, speed and an arm, I think we’re exactly alike,” Don said at the time.

Preston headed for the Dodgers’ rookie league team in the Gulf Coast League. His roommate was Clayton Kershaw, the club’s first-round pick in that draft.

“I told my dad that Clayton could beat his Yankees teams right now,” Preston said. “He said, sure he could. Then, when he and (Manager) Joe Torre came over to the Dodgers, he took another look and said, you know, maybe you were right.”

At that point, it seemed Mattingly and Kershaw might walk into Dodger Stadium together. Mattingly hit .290 in those 47 games.

Then came a five-year siege of injury, pressure and many long walks back to the dugout.

He never got past the High-A California League, and his batting average never exceeded .238, and that was during a 150-strikeout season for Inland Empire.

He wound up hitting .232 for his career, with 25 home runs.

“It was weird,” Mattingly said. “It wasn’t like I had a problem with a particular pitch. It was the consistency. I’d have a period where I’d hit .380 for several weeks and feel like I was making a breakthrough. Then I’d hit .130 for a month. I was hardly ever in the middle, so it was tough to maintain confidence.”

Mattingly also was shuffled between first base and corner outfield. He lost his middle infield spot after two seasons.

Which confirmed one of the scouting doubts when Mattingly was tearing it up at Central High in Evansville, Ind. –- they thought he could play, but where?

He was a “projectable.” He had not played much baseball but showed he could physically handle everything. Hitting, of course, is different. The swing key is usually inside the skull.

But Mattingly was too busy for bitterness. Besides, time was a-wasting. Don had always told him that education was the sixth tool, and Preston had connections.

His high school basketball coach, Brent Chitty, had also coached in Bloomington, Ind. One of his players was Pat Knight, son of Bobby, currently Lamar’s head coach.

“He’s coaching in Indianapolis now,” Mattingly said. “I went up there this summer and worked out with him. I hadn’t played any basketball, to speak of, since high school.

“Practice started and I realized I wasn’t in basketball shape. After a couple of weeks I started to feel at home again.”

Except for the groundouts, he reflects fondly on baseball. Who else saw Kershaw’s first steps, as a one-speed lefty teenager from Dallas? Who else remembers Kenley Jansen as a 6-foot-6 catcher?

“Kenley was actually pretty good defensively,” Mattingly said. “He was big, of course, and he had a great arm, but he could also move pretty well and he had good hands. He threw out a couple of guys, including Jose Reyes, in the World Baseball Classic.

“The bat held him back, but when they put him on the mound it opened everybody’s eyes. That’s what I’ll remember, being around the guys. I didn’t even mind the long bus rides and the crappy hotels, because I always loved to travel. No matter what happened to me, it was a great experience.”

And when the game was over, Mattingy could go back to the hotel or apartment and watch TV.

“Now I have to go back and study,” he said, laughing a bit. “But that’s just another adjustment.”